Mainstream transformative learning emphasizes personally significant learning and liberation from limited ways of being in the world. Reflecting humanistic and emancipatory philosophical commitments, this emphasis can make it difficult to appreciate the transformative potential of learning for and by knowledge, a type of transformation adults can experience in the process of learning occupations and disciplines. The analysis presented in this article is prompted by a small, qualitative study of transformative learning that highlights the role occupational knowledge can play in triggering and bestowing meaning upon personal change. While mainstream transformation theory illuminates aspects of this learning, the alternative theory of “threshold concepts” accounts for the part played by formal knowledge. It is argued that transformation theory can be enhanced by threshold concepts theory when it is shown that the transformative potential of formal knowledge can be viewed as consistent with humanist and emancipatory principles.

中文翻译：

---

知识的转化学习

主流的变革性学习强调个人重要的学习和从有限的世界方式中解放出来。反映人文主义和解放哲学的承诺，这种强调可能使人们难以理解为知识学习和通过知识学习的变革潜力，这是成年人在学习职业和学科过程中可以体验的一种变革。本文中提出的分析是由一项对变革性学习的小型定性研究推动的，该研究强调了休闲知识在触发和赋予个人变化意义方面可以发挥的作用。虽然主流转化理论阐明了这种学习的各个方面，但“阈值概念”的替代理论解释了形式知识所起的作用。